Tag Archives: freedom

Rajoy vs Catalonia

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Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had and has an obligation to uphold the Spanish Constitution which, among other things, made the recent Catalan independence referendum illegal even to hold.  I’ve written elsewhere about what I think of his tactics in his enforcement campaign.

Whether Rajoy ordered his Policia Nacional and his Guardia Civil to engage in the violence they inflicted in Catalonia (nearly 900 Catalan casualties) or they acted on their own initiative, it’s hard to believe Rajoy was so stupid as to not know the violence would ensue when he ordered them in.

Now Rajoy has moved to invoke Article 155, which would allow him to seize control of the autonomous province from Madrid and among other things force new elections in Catalonia to get a new government, hopefully more…respectful…of Madrid imperatives.  The question is before the Spanish Senate as I write this piece on Saturday.

Two questions arise from Rajoy’s tactics (I hesitate to call the performance a strategy, anymore) so far:

1) What will Rajoy do if, as a result of his forced elections, Catalan separatist supporters are again elected to majorities in the Catalan government?

2) Is Rajoy prepared to send Spanish divisions into Catalonia to enforce Madrid’s rule there? Given the tactics he’s already chosen to enforce his will, that’s the choice this affair of his is coming down to.

Whichever way he chooses on the second question will end very badly for both Spain and Catalonia.  Choosing not to send his military across the frontier will amount to abject Spanish surrender to the separatists’ movement, however the latter might choose to play that out (perhaps negotiations would still be possible after Art 155 is officially invoked; the Catalans have been asking for talks all along, even though Rajoy has rejected them out of hand all along).  Choosing to send the military in will both magnify and solidify a political, cultural, and emotional split between Catalonia and Spain, regardless of how militarily successful Rajoy might be.

A Mistake

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Would a partitioned Iraq be a better pawn for Iran?  Or would a freed-up, independent Iraqi Kurdistan serve as a buffer to mitigate Iranian influence in the area—and an impediment to an Iranian road to Damascus and on to Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea?  And an impediment to that road, passing as it would, right by Israel via Hezbollah?

An Iraq weakened by the partition would be easy prey for Iran?  No, that’s a wash for the weakened Iraq that’s already in Iranian sway, via all those Shiite “militias” that are funded and armed by Iran’s terror support organ, the Iranian Republican Guards Corps.

Recall two things: one is the Peshmerga and their courage and battlefield skill and tenacity in rescuing Yazidis from a mountain “island” during the initial Daesh barbarians’ rout of the Iraqi “army,” in stopping the barbarians’ rush east into Kurdish Iraq, in helping clear Mosul, and other events and campaigns.

The other thing is that all of this was done without support from Baghdad, done even with active Baghdad obstruction of US arms going to the Kurds so they could better fight the Daesh, who already were armed with American heavy weapons, courtesy of the Iraqi “army” which had abandoned all of that as they abandoned their duty and ran south before the Daesh, like grains of sand on a desert wind.

Now President Donald Trump is professing American neutrality as Baghdad, supported by Iranian forces (those “militia”) and Iranian weapons, moves into territories liberated by the Kurds from the Daesh and seeks to subjugate the Kurds, once again, to Baghdad’s diktat.

We don’t like the fact that they’re clashing.  …  We’re not taking sides.

And: what is the stability in the region before Iran’s advances with Iraq riven by civil war rather than stabilized by a settled Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan?

Where would an Iraqi Kurdistan, or even a subjugated Kurdish region, be regarding its policy toward the US were we to betray them in the present situation, as we betrayed them after the first Gulf War, implying they should revolt against a surviving Saddam Hussein government only to stand by while he gassed them into submission?

And there’s this bit from a Wall Street Journal editorial:

A central tenet of the Trump foreign policy, a work in progress, has been that the US would rebuild its relationship with America’s allies.

Who are the Kurds, if not an American ally?  Who are the Kurds, if not one of the staunchest allies we’ve had?

“New Commitment To, and Connection With, Each Other”

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That’s what Ana Palacio, Spanish Foreign Minister at the turn of the century, disingenuously claims is needed in Spain following the recent Catalan separation referendum.

Spaniards need to work toward a new commitment to, and connection with, each other and the constitutional system.

But apparently Catalans are not Spaniards according to Palacio, since she also insists

“Dialogue”…is pointless given that Catalan secessionist authorities refuse to live up to or even recognize their responsibilities under the law.

This, in the face of Madrid’s conscious decision to try to suppress the referendum with violence—almost 900 Spanish Guardia– and Policia-inflicted casualties on unarmed Catalans—when, knowing full well that an unhindered referendum would have defeated separatism, Madrid could have arrested the ringleaders peacefully. In fine, Spanish law could have been enforced peacefully; Madrid chose violence.

Responsibilities under law, indeed.

Madrid doesn’t want to work toward a mutual connection; it wants only abject surrender and subjugation of an impertinent population.

Not a Good Sign

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The EU thinks not enough progress has been made on the Brexit talks for there to be any discussion of a post-departure relationship between Great Britain and the rump EU.  You can understand that to mean the Brits haven’t surrendered enough of their nationhood over their effrontery to suit the Poohbahs of Brussels.

Leading lawmakers also slammed continued divisions within the British government over Brexit.

The WSJ piece centered on the Poohbahs’ demands, but the sentence just quoted gives the EU game away.

The “divisions” within the British government are just the noise of liberty and democracy.

Brussels’ plaint, furthermore, comes in an environment in which the EU is demanding that every member state must have the same tax rates, rather than engage in economic competition; member state businesses must be protected from competition by extra-EU businesses through extensively restrictive regulation and the lawfare of bureaucrats like the European Commissioner for Competition; and Poohbah pressure to move to a pan-European government and away from a federation of nations, the first step of which is to create a pan-European budget and tax and lending facilities.

Thus: Brussels’ constant harping in favor of order over the noisiness of democracy is not a good sign for liberty on the European continent.

What’s Their Limiting Principle?

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Progressives, as The Wall Street Journal puts it,

believe that every human problem can be solved with a policy tweak. A ban here, a background check there, and, voila, no more mass shootings.

But what’s their limiting principle?  What level of gun control would satisfy them?  What fundamental concept would make them believe they’ve gone far enough with their tweaks, checks, bans on an American citizen’s access to the means of defending himself and his family?  Besides their empty rhetoric of “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t take all your guns away…,” I mean.

Some statistics would seem to give the lie to the Progressive-Democrats’ claims both about the ubiquitousness of gun violence and the purpose of these persons’ desired “controls.”

[A] 2015 Congressional Research Service report found that from 1999 to 2013 assault rifles were used in 27% of public mass shootings. The Virginia Tech shooter in 2007 killed 32 people with two handguns. FBI statistics show that of 15,070 homicides in 2016, 374 people or 3% were killed with rifles. Some 656 homicides were committed with “personal weapons” (hands, fists, feet) and 1,604 with knives.

Guns just aren’t that important to the violence humans commit against each other.  This, in turn, gives that lie to Progressive-Democrats’ claimed goals of merely wanting to “control” our firearms; our use of them is not out of control.

The Left, the Progressive-Democrats, don’t have a limiting principle.  Their tweaks, checks, bans are only first steps.  Their purpose throughout this “debate” is to disarm us completely, so that Government—one of the entities the 2nd Amendment seeks to enable us to defend ourselves against—will have the only guns.

Now, why might that be, exactly?

And this from a different angle on the Left’s desire to disarm us, from Larry O’Connor at Mediaite:

The US government is systemically racist and, through its inaction, seems willing to allow innocent, black citizens to be murdered by its police force. Furthermore, the judicial system is often rigged to protect the evil, racist officers by never punishing them for those murders. Additionally, the very same government is now in the hands of a fascist, incompetent criminal who, not only hates blacks and Latinos so much that he is willing to let the latter die of starvation and thirst [in Puerto Rico] rather than deliver humanitarian aid to them, but also calls the former [NFL player kneelers] “Sons of bitches” for protesting the racist country he oversees….

…if I really thought this country was so evil and so racist…I certainly wouldn’t want that evil, fascist, incompetent, and racist government to determine who could and could not arm themselves.

Why would a thinking American want a Government so evil to have the only guns?

The position on gun control of the Left generally and of the Progressive-Democratic Party in particular not only has no limiting principle, it makes no sense within itself.

 

h/t Grim’s Hall for the Mediaite link.